


Stir-Crazy for You

by pinkoptics



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Fluff, M/M, Smitten Erik, though he is going to fight it... hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:00:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkoptics/pseuds/pinkoptics
Summary: The world is in lockdown thanks to COVID-19. Roommates Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr are stuck together for the foreseeable future.Charles is bored. Erik is not. Charles wants to talk, constantly. Erik does not, ever. Charles thrives on companionship. Erik craves solitude. What are a magnetic and telepathic mutant to do?
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 22
Kudos: 87





	Stir-Crazy for You

**Author's Note:**

> With the world in crisis, I am trying to have a little bit of fun. It is SO fluffy. Charles is adorable, is he going to wear Erik down?
> 
> Of course he fucking is.
> 
> The fun is in seeing how!
> 
> Enjoy Cherik friends!
> 
> (If you have been reading it on tumblr, you may already be caught up to this point!)

Erik had always felt that Charles was the ideal roommate - absent.

For the entire time they had shared the off-campus apartment, Charles had spent more time out of it than in it. There were two main reasons for his continual absence. The first being that Charles’ PhD research kept him in the university’s labs. The second being that he partied harder than a frat boy on spring break. So, if Charles wasn’t up to his elbows in mutant gene sequencing, he was at the campus pub, or a house party, or anywhere where there were far too many people for Erik’s taste. As a man who valued his privacy and abhorred most human contact, but could in no way afford a flat on his own, Charles had worked out perfectly.

Perfectly that is... until a pandemic swept the globe, the world went to pieces and a lockdown order was issued from the governor’s office.

 _Scheisse_.

*

It started almost immediately.

A tentative rat-ta-ta-tat on his bedroom door.

“Erik?” Charles’ voice was muffled only slightly by the solid wood obstruction. “I’ve made breakfast, would you like some?”

“No.”

Then, remembering civility, “I already ate.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause, long enough to suggest that Charles had retreated, but the metal of his watch, still very near to the door, suggested otherwise.Its only movement was a rotation that implied Charles was checking the time.

“But... it’s only 8:00am.”

Erik snorted. “Human beings do function before sunrise.” Though it was entirely possible that Charles, who was always still asleep no matter what time Erik left for classes in the morning, had no comprehension of this.

Charles threw back, “The better question, however, is why would they want to?” Then, the watch moved away, clearly feeling it had won the point.

Erik rolled his eyes, turned them back to AutoCAD, and contentedly settled back into a Charles-less quiet.

.

.

.

It lasted exactly four hours and seventeen minutes.

*

Rat-ta-ta-tat.

The watch was back, interrupting him again from just outside his door. “Erik? I’m going to make a sandwich. Would you like one?”

Did Charles have a particular preoccupation with food that was only now coming to his attention? How was the man not fat if he drank as much as was rumoured and he ate so often? It had only been—

Oh, fours hours had passed since Charles had last knocked.

The ‘No’ that had been forming promptly died on Erik’s lips as his stomach made its thoughts on the matter known, grumbling its protest — audibly. Well, if Charles was offering...

“Yeah, sure.”

Feeling nothing further needed to be said, Erik returned to scrutinizing the intersecting lines on his screen. The last few hours had passed as quickly as they had on account of the fact that the design he was working on was not coming together. Normally, if he found himself in this frustratingly stuck position, he would take a walk. Not to clear his head and get some air, as many might presume, but to let the metal of the downtown skyscrapers sing to him, inspire him. However, with strict orders in place for citizens not to leave their homes for anything non-essential, that wasn’t an option afforded to him at this particular moment. He gritted his teeth and internally cursed the dummköpfe who had flaunted the exceedingly easy social distancing recommendations that had led to them becoming mandatory. How fucking hard was it to just stay away from other people?

In Erik’s opinion, Humanity had always been annoying and idiotic, and was presently proving him right by drowning in it’s own stupidity. Toilet paper shortages? Really? For a virus that did not cause violent shitting? Erik did not need to be told twice to keep his distance, he actively lived his life that way.

Rat-ta-ta-tat.

“Your sandwich is ready.”

Maybe it was the size the office spaces...

“Just leave it by the door.”

Or, if he moved the interior garden space...

If Charles’ reply was inflected with disappointment, or if he had muttered something along the lines of ‘not being Erik’s butler’, Erik wasn’t aware of it, swallowed as it was by the stream of Erik’s churning architectural thoughts.

*

“He lives.”

The mildly sardonic voice jolted Erik out of his thoughts. Charles was sitting on the sofa, looking at him over the back of it.

Right. Charles. His roommate. Who was unexpectedly still here, and not at a pub, because they weren’t allowed to leave the flat.

“I what?”

“Live,” Charles reiterated, drawing the word out slightly. “I was beginning to wonder if coronavirus had gotten to you.”

“Which clearly means the absurdity that is the American news cycle is getting to you.” Erik gestured to the TV where CNN was still running behind Charles, though muted. Charles didn’t respond, at least not verbally, as his eyes flicked down to Erik’s feet.

The sandwich. Shit. It had been sitting there for... 5 hours.

 _Dick move, sugar. What would mama say?_ Emma’s acerbic voice came to him, unbidden. She teased him mercilessly about everything, but most especially his ‘mama’s boy’ relationship with his mother. Her words. Not his.

“I was... focused.”

Charles snorted. “I’d noticed. I was also wiling away the hours pondering if you have a secondary mutation.”

“For focus?”

This time Charles laughed. “No. For bladder control.”

Erik bristled. He tolerated teasing from Emma, barely.

“By my watch, you haven’t used the facilities since... well... actually, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been awake for ten and a half hours, so at least that long. Is that why you’ve finally emerged from your den?” Charles quirked an amused eyebrow. If eyebrows could be amused. It appears Charles’ could be.

It was, in fact, why he had ‘emerged,’ but now that Charles had pointed it out, he found himself rooted in place. How was he supposed to take a piss equipped with the knowledge that Charles was apparently observing and tracking his bathroom habits?

Charles chuckled again and made a shooing motion. “Go on, use the loo, you must be positively bursting at this point. I won’t be listening. Scout’s honour, or whatever it is American’s say.” He turned back to the TV, unmuted it and turned up the volume.

Was this the way lockdown was going to be?

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose as he turned in the direction of their tiny ‘loo.’

Scheiße.

*

When Erik awoke the next day, there was an ache behind his eyes. Not quite a headache, but there and throbbing dully. He knew why— too long staring at the screen the day before, trying to make the blasted design work. Today, perhaps, he would work on the scale model instead.

Coffee. Yes. Strong. Black. That was the kick start he needed.

Blearily, he opened his bedroom door.

Then stopped dead. Blinking.

Taped to the wall opposite him was a drawing of a cartoonish superhero with a strong jaw and short, cropped hair. Emblazoned on his chest, much like Super Man, was a horseshoe magnet with little lightning bolts coming out of either end. Above the man, in bold print, were the words, ‘Master of Magnetism!’ Below...

Erik ripped the drawing off the wall and crumpled it up, tossing it unceremoniously behind him. He gritted his teeth as he walked into the kitchen, needing that coffee more now than before. If he tamped the grounds down into the espresso filter a little more aggressively than usual, who could blame him? Whatever sins he had committed to be stuck in lockdown with Charles Xavier, whatever bad karma he had accumulated... he was clearly paying dearly now.

Though he had crumpled the paper up, he could still clearly see the words that had been written below his superhero likeness —

‘Wizard of Wizzing’

*

When the next ra-ta-ta-tat came, Erik was half-expecting it.

“Erik?”

He looked heavenward. Charles didn’t wait for a response.

“At the risk of proving my own insanity, seeing as I keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, would you deign to grace me with your presence and come out for breakfast?”

This time, Erik hadn’t eaten. He had shot back two espressos (his espresso machine being the only luxury he afforded himself on a student budget) and holed himself back up in his room, alternating between different aspects of his final project, so that he wouldn’t make the mistake of staring at the screen again for another full day.

“For the love of— Erik, open the bloody door would you?”

Apparently, Charles was an impatient sort. Erik could file that under things he had learned about Charles since yesterday. So far, the list read as follows:

  1. Charles is annoying.
  2. Charles is way too concerned about eating 3 square meals a day.
  3. Charles is a cheeky motherfucker.
  4. Charles is persistent.
  5. Charles isn’t a half-bad artist.



#5 pained him to admit, but when he had unwrinkled his super hero drawing (why he hadn’t just tossed it into the bin he did not know), he couldn’t help but acknowledge that Charles had done a passably good job of sketching him accurately, if cartoonishly.

Erik didn’t bother to get up, but swivelled his desk chair around and opened the door with his ‘master of magnetism’ powers. Once it was open, Charles leaned against the door jam and crossed his arms.

“You need to eat, I need to eat. We’re stuck here, together, for at least two weeks, if not longer. Surely, even a recluse such as yourself could use a modicum of conversation once a day.”

 _You’re not going to be rude to him twice now, are you, sugar?_ Just think of what mama would have to say about that. When Emma had become his inner monologue/conscience he wasn’t sure. Particularly because he wasn’t sure Emma had a conscience.

“Did you swallow a dictionary?”

Charles’ expressive eyebrows furrowed. “Pardon?”

Erik raised a finger with each word he listed off. “Deign, recluse, modicum.”

A slow grin spread across Charles’ face. “Would you like me to use smaller words? Very well, if my request confused you... You.” He gestured at Erik. “Me.” He gestured at himself. “Food.” He mimed eating.

Erik relented, if for no other reason than suspecting that Charles would not stop asking. He stood up and made for the door.

Charles gasped and took a staggering step back, the very picture shock. “He is deigning me with his presence. Alert the presses!”

“Fuck off.” Erik rolled his eyes, but nevertheless followed him into the kitchen.

“Gladly,” Charles threw back. “But only after breakfast.”

*

Having won the breakfast victory, Charles did back off, slightly. For the next few days, he continued to request Erik’s presence at breakfast in ever more ridiculous ways (“Would his grace acquiesce to partake in the morning meal this day?” He then proceeded to bow so fucking low, Erik was not sure how Charles didn’t fall over). Each morning, Erik wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry or smack him.

  1. Charles is a dramatic dork.



He also learned that there was nothing clever about eating as soon as he’d gotten up, as Charles would insist on his partaking of the morning meal anyway (see #4 - persistent). On those days, he ended up having a second breakfast and he wasn’t a fucking hobbit, so he started waiting for Charles to roll out of bed to eat. Mercifully, once breakfast was done, Charles would leave him be— no ra-ta-ta-tats thereafter.

  1. Charles is a man willing to compromise.



Also, mercifully, Charles was happy to carry most of the breakfast conversation, which suited Erik just fine. Erik quickly learned two more things.

  1. Charles is intelligent.
  2. Charles is scary intelligent.



Yes, there was a difference.

If he were being fair, he had known #8 before, but in more of a peripheral than first hand sort of way. Despite being relatively the same age as Erik, Charles already had multiple PhDs in the fields of psychology and biology. The research he was doing into mutant genetics was common knowledge around campus, at least among fellow mutants. So, yeah, he knew Charles was nerd smart.

The scary part came to his awareness as he watched Charles analyze the COVID-19 crisis first hand. Divorced from his own research (apparently the university servers were not available remotely, and as his work had no bearing on helping with the crisis, his lab access had been deemed non-essential), Charles had spent his days throwing himself into learning about the outbreak from every angle. The rare times Erik did emerge from his room to engage in his wizardly wizzing, he had observed Charles doing everything from devouring multiple media outlets, to Zooming with what he suspected were important medical researchers around the globe, to pouring through data provided by said researchers. Erik felt he was probably getting better information and projections than anyone in the country. More than once he had caught himself observing, or listening in, even if he barely understood any of it. If Charles had somehow cured cancer by the end of it, Erik didn’t think he would be in the least surprised.

Breakfast. A tolerable amount of social interaction. The rest of the day to peacefully work on his design.

It was a routine. Not his usual routine, obviously (if he heard the words ‘new normal’ one more time he thought he might throw up), but it was a routine and Erik thrived on routine.

Unfortunately...

It only lasted five days.


End file.
